When you meet someone, you ask the name, age and nationality. It is something tied with the identity and one cannot exist without a nationality. Nationality is so important because it gives us a sense of belonging of which we are deeply proud. We study our country’s past and learn its victories. People who live in the same country share a language, a History and something more transcendental and untouchable that has been simplisticly named nationality. Something that unites the people who live inside some invisible divisions that are called borders.

The human being is naturally afraid of what’s different and being of a different nationality many times leads to a kind of aversion, reluctance or dislike based on that factor. Portugal and Spain, who are literally side by side alone in a peninsula, have this dislike for each other, probaby historical that dates back to the wars for territory and independence. When Portuguese travel to Spain or vice-versa, we like the people individually, it’s just a “national” attitude to dislike each other as a Nation. Many times, there’s a stereotype involved that helps explain and homogenize the individuals inside a country: French are racists, Brazilian are dishonest, Spanish are too loud, Swiss are organized, Chinese are good at Maths, Jamaicans are lazy and smoke weed, etc. etc. You probably recognized some of these and know others and maybe grinned – these simplifications are funny. But they are simplifications nonetheless. Some French people are racist, and some Swiss people are organized, but some are not. After accepting a stereotype as true, we have the tendency to interpret everything according to it and therefore over-simplifying a complex reality into a plain homogeneous idea. If you look around it’s undeniable the diversity of people that coexist in the same place. I am so different from my family and they live inside my house, so what to say about a whole country!

The concept of nationality is deeply rooted in our mentality and our frame of thought, but truth is, nationality is completely random. I didn’t choose it, I didn’t “earn” it, I just was born inside these frontiers and I could have easily been born somewhere else. How can something random define me? And how come am I supposed to be related to random people that lay inside the same invisible boundaries that me, more than I would be to the rest of the people that cohabit the planet I live in? One may be proud of a country’s History (in many ways I am not) but does that make sense when it wasn’t himself that starred that past? It is the same as apologizing for something my ancesters did.

There is this interesting mental exercise developed by John Rawls in which one must imagine they knew nothing about the personal characteristics in order to make fair decisions. How would your attitude change considering you could be any nationality? (Just imagine you don’t know from where you are – it’s a mental exercise.)

We are naturally afraid of what’s different so let’s focuse on what unites us: We are all Human. Same species. Same planet. Same rights.

I have recently encountered the term global citizen, which I am starting to become very fond of. But in reality, being a global citizen really means to be human, on top of British, French or German.

7 thoughts on “The absurdity behind nationality.”

Yes, I think you are correct. I always find it interesting when I ask people in the UK about what defines their nationality. The Scots think it is their industriousness, honesty and camaraderie. The Welsh think it is because they are hard working, straight talking and socially minded. The English feel that they are diligent, call a spade a spade and have a sense of community spirit. None of them ever ascribe negative aspects to their own national stereotype, that is always reserved for their neighbour. It sounds that the same themes arise on the Iberian peninsula.

Same thing in Italy. North Italian tought, in the ’70, that Southerners were all job thieves. Things are not changed and know they get worse with immigrant people, “stealing every single work place”.
Sometimes I’m really ashamed to be classified as italian. Global citizen fits very well 🙂

nationalism has, is, and will always be “divide and conquer” politics in most evil form..it’s the 1%ers way of maintaining the invisible cast system that they have created globally for the past 2,000 years…History has proven that any time the masses start discussing “income inequality” issues…it’s time for the 1%ers to blame the “others” as a form of distraction away from the real problem..that these (very few) people have far too much wealth and power and love to play “God” compared to the billions of people who are barely surviving ..Unfortunately for the 1%ers climate change/rising sea levels will be there down fall because it puts a mirror right in front of their face..they will not be able to blame anyone but themselves because their immense wealth and power came about by raping this beautiful planet for every penny it’s worth…Great blog 🙂